


What Built Bodhi Rook

by the_pen_of_gabriel



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 07:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9169396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_pen_of_gabriel/pseuds/the_pen_of_gabriel
Summary: Bodhi Rook reflects on the events that made him who he was, and led him to where he was destined to go.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Bodhi Rook.

Bodhi Rook was never one to be confident. When he was an Imperial shuttle pilot, he was often likened to a door: sometimes decisively closed, but often swinging about. It wasn’t a joke he was fond of, but he couldn’t deny its accuracy. He was the human embodiment of wishy-washy. It was one of his many… many faults. So when Galen Erso handed him his hologram message, he immediately regretted every decision he’d made leading up to this point.

“You have to pick someone else, Galen. I’m not going to do this right. I’m going to get caught and killed before I’m even in the shuttle, I just know it. I can’t-”

“Bodhi Rook, you are going to do this.”

Galen’s tone made the nervous pilot feel like he was being given an order, so he straightened his posture like a good soldier would. He flinched when Galen stopped and corrected his behavior.

“No one can make you do this. You’re not a mindless soldier, Bodhi. You get to decide, here and now: Are you going to go back to your life as an inflicter of pain, or are you going to stand up for the galaxy, and fight? This message, it has the potential to save the Rebellion and end this war. This is your chance to listen to your heart, Bodhi, and make up for everything the Empire made you do.”

Bodhi, for once in his life, made a swift decision. He grabbed the hologram chip from Galen, hid it in his boot, and promised the old scientist who stood beside him that he would not fail. 

 

Which led to him reflecting on his life choices, once again in an Imperial shuttle. Galen Erso, the man he fought so hard to honor, was dead. He almost felt empty. He could feel the tension, anger and anguish, generating between the captain he’d barely met and a woman he’d talked to once. He jumped every time they yelled, embarrassment rolling off him like rain drops on Eadu. He hadn’t always been so anxious. But the life of a shuttle pilot in the middle of a war wasn’t exactly comforting.

When he was training, in flight school, they peppered the students with words of double edged encouragements, saying just enough to have equal parts uplifting and Anti-Alliance propaganda. For example, if a student failed a simulation, they were told they fly “like an X-Wing pilot”. It wasn’t enough to be meaningful, but now it made him shiver. Years upon years of subtle words increased the hatred for the Alliance within them, making it burn under their skin to hear the words “rebellion”. He had once been the most promising student in his group, a talented pilot, destined to fly a Tie Fighter one day.

Until the day their training was put to the test. Each soldier was to prove their worth and obedience by succeeding one mission against the Alliance forces. Bodhi was presented with the choice of either shooting a man or destroying his chances of being more than a janitor for the Empire. He was all prepared to do it, too, until suddenly, locked in combat, Bodhi saw the man’s eyes, how furious and human they seemed. Surely this one man, with the blood of others splattered across his armor, surely he wasn’t the senseless monster he’d always heard about? Alliance actions were justified to him by claiming the rebels sought disorder, craved chaos, and were at their core rotten and dishonest. But that wasn’t what Bodhi found. He found drive, yes, but simply to stay alive. They were all soldiers, after all, in the middle of a war none of them had asked for. This man’s eyes looked at once as if they would in another time be considered friendly. He became real to Bodhi, became a person and not a monster. He seemed to long for peace, like Bodhi did. And he knew in that instant he could not kill the man in front of him.

That didn’t, however, stop the soldier next to him from placing his blaster between the Alliance soldier’s eyes and pulling the trigger. Bodhi collapsed to the floor, shaking. He’d seen death before, sure, but never so close. Never so intimate. The battle around him continued but Bodhi couldn’t move. Couldn’t see or think or cry out, even. He wanted it all to stop.

When eventually it did, and the battle came crashing to a halt with Imperial victory, Bodhi was reduced to the nervous, anxious mess he’d always secretly been. He never did kill on behalf of the Empire. He was never sure why he was kept as part of the army, never certain how his fate and personalities were intertwined. But he figured it out that day he watched Galen Erso die. His nervousness was a strength, not a vice, allowing him to make the best decision always. His unwillingness to kill brought him to realize the only justified cause a lot sooner, defending the Alliance like he never had, and never would, for the Empire. Bodhi Rook slowly, and on his own, began to accept who he was and love despite his flaws.

 

So on the day Bodhi Rook watched his only friends march off to their deaths, when he accepted the likelihood of his own demise, he could actually smile. They would succeed. He would do everything he could to insure it. He’d take the first chance, like Jyn had said, and the next one and the next. And when those chances were spent, when Bodhi Rook watched the grenade fly into his shuttle and realized there was nowhere to run, he took pride in his accomplishments. He had taken the message further than anyone had asked him too, done above and beyond his command, and had been an integral part of their last stand on Scarif. He calmed his ever-shaking hands and smiled to himself. He welcomed the explosion, satisfied with what he had done. He was anxious and talkative and indecisive, yes. But he was proud of who he had become. He was the imperial defector who changed the game. He was the pilot for the Rogue One team. Above all, he was Bodhi Rook. And he would die damn proud of that.

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of feelings.


End file.
